The bigwigs in Iran must be smiling today as preliminary figures from the Iraqi elections show that the group ahead in the ballot count so far will be friendly to them:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 3 – Preliminary election returns released Thursday by Iraqi authorities showed that 72 percent of the 1.6 million votes counted so far from Sunday’s election went to an alliance of Shiite parties dominated by religious groups with strong links to Iran. Only 18 percent went to a group led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who favors strong ties to the United States. Few votes went to Sunni candidates.
Although the early votes were drawn only from Baghdad and from five southern provinces where the Shiite parties were expected to score strongly, and from only 10 percent of the 5,216 polling stations, the scale of the vote for both religious and secular Shiites underscored the probability of a crushing triumph and a historic shift from decades of Sunni minority rule in Iraq.
The religious alliance, an amalgam of political parties and independents forged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful religious leader, took nearly 1.2 million votes, more than a third of them in Baghdad, against about 295,000 for the coalition led by Dr. Allawi.
The scale of the lead held by the Shiites and the possibility of their coalition with the Kurds seemed certain to cause anxiety among Sunnis, who largely boycotted the election and remain deeply suspicious of the emerging Shiite dominance.
The Sunni boycott means any new government is going to have to take steps to placate an reassure the Sunnis if it is to truly succeed. Otherwise, this clear split could mean a political fault line that could prove shaky to the new democracy if everything does not go smoothly — and there is a bigger likelihood of more bumps along the way than a totally smooth ride. More:
Indeed, some Sunni leaders said the Shiites’ strong showing so far validated the deep sense of alienation felt by the Sunnis.
"The Shia were determined and encouraged their supporters to vote and to register, and the Sunnis didn’t care that much, either out of fear or apathy," said Adnan Pachachi, 82, a foreign minister in the years before Saddam Hussein and a prominent Sunni leader. "This is the story really."
But signs also emerged on Thursday that some Sunni leaders were ready to involve themselves at least in a limited way in the political debate. The leaders of 13 mostly Sunni political parties that stayed out of the election had agreed Monday that they would take part in writing the constitution, the next step in the establishment of a new Iraqi state.
That’s a good sign: Sunni participation, in whatever form, is the second peg in at least three pegs that will need to stabilize the new democracy: hold of free elections (done), writing a constitution and the clear imposition of order.
AND THIS…some rejected Iraqi headlines (emailed to us by Pennywit)
HOLY SHIITE!
Iraqis look on the Sunni Side
Politics, Sunni-Side Up
Kurds get their Whey
Sunni Day for Iraq
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.